2012’s 5 Biggest Non-Apple Tech Releases

Here's who hopes to outshine the ubiquitous iGear

Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL)! Who cares about its $355 billion market cap or its all-encompassing influence on the PC industry thanks to the iPad’s monumental popularity? No one, that’s who! There are 499 other companies on Fortune‘s annual list, and a large number of them are competing with Apple in a variety of segments in the technology industry. Those companies are gunning for Apple in 2012.

At the beginning of 2011, plenty of companies were planning to do the same. MotorolaMobility (NYSE:MMI), Research in Motion (NASDAQ:RIMM) and many others were planning to hit hard with their own tablets, but the Xoom and PlayBook were all but ignored by consumers when they came out earlier this year. Intel (NASDAQ:INTC), looking to compete with the slim MacBook Air laptop line, pushed its new Ultrabook laptop architecture, but so far, early-adopting manufacturers such as Asus have found little success.

In these closing weeks, though, Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) has made some headway against the Cupertino, Calif.-based giant thanks to the early success of the Kindle Fire tablet. Apple is not impregnable, it turns out. So what’s being released in 2012 that can further rattle Tim Cook’s house? Read on: